Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Top Ten Tuesday: My Favorite Classics

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. For today's theme participants pick the 10 best of the category of their choice. I've gone with "Classics," since they've been on my mind lately. I'm participating in a few classics projects at the moment, including a new 5 year plan to read 50 classics. So, if you ask me in a year or so, this list will probably have changed! Of course, that's part of the fun of making lists like these.

Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson. I love this little novella of interconnected short stories.

Middlemarch, George Eliot. This is a chunkster, but it is so worth it. Eliot was such a fascinating personality, too.

Catch-22, Joseph Heller. The absurdity of war, perfectly captured.

The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot. Poetry! Yes, poetry. I appreciated that my copy had lots of notes, as that certainly helped my understanding.

Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser. This book felt so modern. The main character has premarital sex! The scandal! I love it :-)

Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf. One day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a London housewife planning a party. It sounds trite, but it's not.

The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde. Seriously funny play.

As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner. It took until I was a good third of the way into this book before it clicked and I just flew through the rest.

For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway. One of the first Hemingway novels I ever read, it remains one of my favorites.

A Mercy, Toni Morrison. This book made me fall in love with Toni Morrison. Now I want to read all her books!

7 comments:

Alex (The Sleepless Reader) said...

Only read As I Lay Dying very recently and was amazed at how much I liked it. it's one of those books that I'm sure will have a different impact the next time(s) I read it.

ImageNations said...

Me too, regarding Morrison. I want to say that I have read the entire works of Toni Morrison. As of now I can't say that for any other author.

Melissa (Avid Reader) said...

Winesburg, Ohio and Catch-22 are two of my favorites as well!

Willa said...

Love your list! I also did a classics theme but we feature none of the same books :-) So found your list a great source of inspiration - I have to read The Importance soon!

MJ said...

@Alex: Yeah, I know what you mean. After my initial struggle, I just loved it. I know it's one I'll be returning to in the future.

@Nana: Morrison's got quite a backlist, but I'm determined to make my way through it. I'm planning on rereading Beloved this year, since I didn't quite appreciate it back in high school.

@Melissa: They are so good!

@Willa: I love your list! I thought about putting Anne of Green Gables on mine, too. I loved that whole series when I was growing up.

Hannah said...

I've only read The Importance of Being Earnest (loved!), but three of these are on my Classics Club list! I'm planning on reading Middlemarch, Mrs. Dalloway and For Whom the Bell Tolls in the hopefully not too distant future :) Excited that they rank in your top 10!

MJ said...

@Hannah: Oh, have fun with those! I'm excited to get stared on my Classics Club picks.